There may not be a lot of art in West Texas, but there’s an abundance of sky. Finally, with Texas Tech’s New West Texas Sky project, they’re going to share. On September 29, 2012, 642 somebodies west of Abilene took pictures of the sky and uploaded them to a designated server, telling where their picture was taken using city name or GPS coordinates, but remaining anonymous. The results are an investigation into collective image making, image ownership and distribution, displayed in the Folio Gallery of the Art Building at Texas Tech in Lubbock (in conjunction with the Texas Biennial) and online!

2. Jonah Groeneboer: The Dislocated Center Of The Material World Galveston Artist Residency August 24-October 19

Stealing a march on the advancing art-opening assault beginning next weekend, the Galveston Artist Residency has installed The Dislocated Center Of The Material World by New York artist Jonah Groeneboer. Seven abstract works animated by sea-salt natural light from the gallery’s clerestory are supposed to “charge the gallery with illusive dichotomies: silence and noise, motion and stillness, presence and absence, appearance and disappearance.” They include a thirty-two foot wave made of black string, three large black abstract paintings in which geometric forms appear and disappear depending on the position of the viewer, a thread sculpture that appears to stand unsupported, a video of the sun moving across an arrangement of mirrors, and an experimental sound piece made in collaboration with electronic composer and musician Bruno Coviello.

Denim pockets, denim zippers, a denim covered wagon, and an enormous denim silhouette of Texas fill Austin’s MASS gallery with a visually thematic, if conceptually scattered installation centered on a 2011 performance, and the film thereof: 200 denim clad musicians, tapping hammers together, face to face, in a dusty landscape, all without eye protection! The show is a psychedelic worksong, experimental film, and denim-heavy installation experience, with hammers, of course. Hook yourself a prize at the show’s interactive pick-a-pocket activity—I scored a White Zombie cassette!

Fun Show, part tag sale, part Antiques Roadshow, is becoming a biennial tradition at PDNB. Two years ago, when the gallery took a vacation from photography to display selections from Burt Finger’s prodigious and acute collections of folk art and curiosities, it was a sensation. This year’s edition focuses on toys, art glass, paintings, objets d’art, and other less definable, but still wondrous, items.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother going to the last couple weeks of the DMA’s book-as-a-show documenting fifty years of moments, people, and organizations that helped shape North Texas’ relationship with contemporary art. It’s much more comfortable and satisfying to read the very interesting (and free!) e-book when displayed on your screen than to peer at it spread across a gallery wall.